


Cool, But Can You Do Three?

by jedusaur



Category: Bandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cruises, Juggling, M/M, Misunderstanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-09
Updated: 2011-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-22 11:15:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedusaur/pseuds/jedusaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer and Brendon do two shows on cruises: the one for people who think a juggling show sounds like a great way to spend an hour in the afternoon with their kids, and the after-bedtime one for grownups clutching overpriced mojitos. This is the late-night show. Children are not allowed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cool, But Can You Do Three?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://verbyna.livejournal.com/profile)[**verbyna**](http://verbyna.livejournal.com/) for cheerleading, and [](http://crazybutsound.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://crazybutsound.livejournal.com/)**crazybutsound** for cheerleading and illustration.

Brendon and Spencer have fundamental and irreconcilable differences in opinion about the disposition of the ideal volunteer child. Brendon likes them cute and snarky. Audiences love it when the kid mouths off, and getting a good banter going is a great way to get them engaged.

Spencer prefers children terrified, silent, and cooperative.

Today's volunteer is looking to be Brendon's type. She's got thick hair pulled into pigtails and a mischievous grin on her face. As she bounces up the stairs to the stage, he can see an apple clutched in her hand.

"Hey there," Brendon says. "What's your name?"

"Samantha," she says. He's about to repeat her name into the mic for the benefit of the audience when she holds up the apple and asks, "Can you juggle this and two balls and eat it at the same time?"

Brendon can actually feel Spencer glaring at her from behind him, where he's getting the clubs for the next part of their act. Brendon hastily moves to block the visual death ray. "Sure I can," he says. He grabs the apple from Samantha and two balls from the prop cart, juggling the two balls in one hand and eating the apple with the other. It gets a pretty loud laugh.

"That's not what I meant!" says Samantha.

Brendon shoves the balls and the apple into her hands. "Yeah? Show me what you meant." Her confused face gets another laugh from the crowd. Brendon can juggle two balls and an apple while eating the apple, of course, but it's better for the flow of the show to fuck around with the kid. No self-respecting juggler performs that damn trick, anyway.

Just when it looks like Samantha is about to actually try to juggle, Spencer steps up besides her with the clubs. "See these?" he asks. He holds a club out menacingly. "We're about to hurl these two inches past your nose. Ready?"

She looks a little less sure of herself. "Um."

Spencer shoots a self-satisfied look at Brendon. Brendon doesn't sigh or react, because the audience saw that satisfied look and they'll see any expression he tries to send in return. Spencer's never really understood that, the part where he's being looked at and judged every second he spends onstage.

Brendon understands it. It's what he loves most about this job: getting to convince everyone to judge him favorably.

"Okay, Samantha, stand right here. When one of these goes _whoosh_ in front of you, don't step away from it, 'cause there's gonna be another one going _whoosh_ behind you at the same time..."

***

The dinner buffet, as usual, has about seven meat-based options and nothing vegetarian except the sides. Brendon resignedly loads up on mashed potatoes and salad, trying to ignore the sausage gravy Spencer is happily splashing all over his plate. It's hard to avoid meat on a cruise ship. The menu is designed for people splurging on a week of decadence. No one sticks to a diet on a cruise.

Brendon and Spencer never expected to end up here, bobbing around the Caribbean for six months at a time. Brendon's always wanted to be a traveling juggler with a bus and maybe some vaudeville partners, booking gigs all around the country, and Spencer is more of an athlete than a performer. But life doesn't always pay for dreams. They met in Portland, both doing crowd-pleasers on the street for single bills like strippers, and discovered how well they worked together. It turned out there were people who would pay them pretty well to learn how to pass clubs on a moving ship. So that's what they do.

"Fuck," says Spencer, his plate slipping from his fingers. Brendon lunges to catch it, in the process hurling a roll off his own plate. Spencer snatches the roll from mid-air. Nothing hits the ground. They freeze for a second, then look at each other and start laughing.

Moments like this remind Brendon why he's stuck with Spencer for so long, even though seven-ball endurance contests are so much more Spencer's speed than flourishes and one-liners. It's because they mesh so well. They know each other's movements like they know their own, and their timing is fucking perfect.

***

Brendon holds up one of his neon green plastic rings and says, "This is a cockring I stole from the Jolly Green Giant."

Spencer and Brendon do two shows on cruises: the one for people who think a juggling show sounds like a great way to spend an hour in the afternoon with their kids, and the after-bedtime one for grownups clutching overpriced mojitos. This is the late-night show. Children are not allowed.

"I'm gonna need someone to give me a hand up here," says Brendon. "Don't worry, you won't have to put a cockring on me. I've got Spencer for that."

This part was actually Spencer's idea, astoundingly enough. He thought it would be funny for them to flirt with each other onstage for the adult show. After much trial and error, they determined that audiences prefer unrequited lusting over mutual flirtation, so they've settled into a routine where Brendon blatantly hits on Spencer and Spencer casually brushes him off. The drunken hordes love it.

Brendon is a little sad about that. He likes the mutual flirtation routine better.

Brendon scans the crowd for a likely-looking volunteer candidate. He wants someone drunk enough to be funny, but not too drunk to actually hold the ring where they're supposed to without dropping it. Usually he goes for one of the laughing red-faced guys slouching down under their girlfriends' wildly pointing fingers. He's about to pick one of them when Spencer says, "How about you? Yeah, with the scarf. Come on up."

Brendon glances at him in surprise. Spencer rarely talks onstage--Brendon's been thinking about working up a show that plays off the Jay-and-Silent-Bob/Penn-and-Teller kind of dynamic, so Spencer wouldn't have to be mic'd at all. He's never stepped in to choose a volunteer like that. And the guy he picked looks totally stone-faced sober. But he's already climbing up onto the stage, so Brendon pretty much has to go with it.

"Hey there, hot stuff," says Spencer. "What's your name?" And _whoa_ , that was not part of the script at _all._ Brendon lets his surprise show on his face and tosses a little disappointment in to boot, since it fits with the character he's playing.

"Ryan Ross," murmurs the guy, getting up in Spencer's space enough that the lapel mic picks up every sultry syllable. "But I'll answer to 'hot stuff' if that's what tickles your fancy."

Shit.

Well, okay, if Spencer wants to ad-lib, Brendon can work with that. He bounces the plastic ring off the back of Ryan's head. The crowd cracks up. "Nice to meet you!" he says cheerfully. "Before we do this next trick, you'll want to learn to catch that."

The rest of the show goes well. Ryan is better equipped to handle being teased than little Samantha, and his other-woman persona fits into their dynamic beautifully. At the end of the show, when Brendon goes in for the kiss and Spencer usually blocks him with a spinning plate, Ryan steps in and steals the kiss instead. The audience eats it up. If Brendon were allowed to pass a hat on the ship, he knows they'd be getting tips out their ears tonight.

After the performance, Ryan shows up backstage. Brendon has a momentary creepy-stalker freakout before Spencer says, "Oh, hey, I guess you guys haven't been introduced for real. Ryan hawks credit cards up on five by the sushi bar."

Brendon raises his eyebrows. "You picked someone on staff to be a volunteer?"

Spencer waves it off. "Whatever, he was in the audience. No one's gonna care. Thanks for stepping up, Ryan, you did awesome. See you tomorrow?"

"You bet," says Ryan. "Nice meeting you, Brendon."

When he's gone, Brendon doesn't even have to say anything before Spencer is blurting out, "I know, I know, I'm sorry. He's just really fun, I knew it would work. I promise it won't happen again."

Brendon kind of wishes he were talking about the kiss.

***

Brendon is stepping out of the tiny shower in their tiny shared cabin when he hears the door open and close, signifying Spencer's return from his evening on the town. Not that there's a whole lot of town on a cruise ship. There are several bars, though. Brendon doesn't visit them much--he likes the piano bar with the slowly revolving baby grand, but he's not so fond of getting drunk. Spencer, on the other hand, likes to go out and get shitfaced once in a while.

Judging by the noises coming from the bedroom, tonight is one of those nights. Brendon winces at a loud crash, hoping it wasn't anything too expensive. He picks up the package of Q-tips and starts cleaning his ears.

Just when he's about to wrap a towel around his waist and open the door, he hears something else. At first he thinks Spencer is jerking off, but the rhythmic slapping he's hearing is a little loud for that, and the voice spilling cuss words into the cabin is definitely not Spencer. It's too late to let them know he's there without causing a situation of extreme awkwardness. Brendon screws up his eyes, like that's going to help block out the sound somehow. He's just going to have to wait until Spencer's alone and hope that he thinks the sound of the door opening is the hall door rather than the bathroom door.

He can just stand here and look at the wall. He can ignore the fact that he's listening to Spencer have sex, and the fact that he can totally tell which moans are Spencer, and above all the little tingles that rush to his cock every time he hears a Spencer-moan. He'll be fine.

Then Spencer says, "Goddammit. Ryan, stop. Condom broke."

It's kind of obvious, in retrospect, that Spencer must be fucking Ryan. That entire show was basically foreplay. Brendon isn't new to flirting--he can identify it just fine. Maybe he just didn't want to believe it was real. Regardless, it takes him off guard, and when Spencer says "I've got more in the bathroom," he doesn't think to step back into the shower and close the frosted glass door. Or, like, lock the bathroom door and let them handle the awkwardness when they realize he's in there. Instead, he's still standing there frozen, naked and hard and still slightly damp from his shower, when the door swings open.

Ryan is also completely butt-naked and hard. The moment stretches out forever, both of them blinking vaguely at each other, before Ryan flashes a wide grin and steps around him to get to the medicine cabinet. He retrieves the package of Trojans from the shelf and backs out, eyeing Brendon's cock appreciatively as he shuts the door. A minute later, the slapping starts up again. Ryan is being a lot louder.

Brendon isn't sure what just happened.

When he eventually hears Ryan leave and emerges from the bathroom cautiously, Spencer is already asleep. Brendon tosses his wet towel over Spencer's bare ass, because that's what he would normally do, and he's trying to hold onto normal.

***

"Spencer never drops," says Brendon. He waves his hand through the three-ball cascade Spencer has been keeping steady for two minutes. "See? You can't distract him. He just keeps on going. You know how much he has to practice? This man has no life."

They laugh, like they always laugh.

Brendon grabs a handful of balls and starts tossing them into the pattern. Four, five, six. "Me, I like to do other things once in a while," says Brendon. He picks up his devilsticks and then nearly drops them again when his eyes settle on a face in the crowd. It's Ryan, sitting between an old lady and a little kid.

Staring at him. Not at Spencer. At Brendon.

Brief hiccup, then Brendon dives into his devilstick routine. "I like learning new things," he says, and twirls the stick around his ankle. He starts juggling the devilstick and the handsticks like clubs, then drops a handstick and kicks up a stage ball to replace it. "I'll juggle three of anything. Give me a shoe and two grapes, I can juggle them."

He can feel Ryan's gaze, even if he's too focused on the props to look at it. He swallows. "One time I was practicing with Spencer, and I got bored and went off to watch a movie. I left him standing there juggling five balls, and when I got done with my movie, he was still standing there juggling five balls."

Brendon picks up a Barbie doll, a plastic horseshoe, and a set of keys from the prop table. "So if I want him to juggle anything except boring old balls, I have to trick him." He hooks the keyring over his finger, the horseshoe over his wrist, and the doll under his arm, and steals three balls from Spencer's pattern. Spencer turns toward him, and they start passing.

Brendon drops a ball and adds the horseshoe into the pattern instead, then does the same for the doll and the keys. Then Spencer stops passing back to him and starts juggling all six objects himself. It's probably the most impressive trick in their show, not that anyone ever really appreciates it.

Looking out into the applauding audience, Brendon can see Ryan, still leveling an impressive set of bedroom eyes at him. He doesn't get it. Why isn't Ryan looking at Spencer?

***

When he opens the cabin door to a knock and gets a mouthful of Ryan's tongue, he begins to understand. Except not really.

"Thbhppt," says Brendon suavely. "The hell?"

Ryan steps inside and closes the door behind him. "Thought we could get started early," he says, and kisses Brendon again. And because Brendon and Spencer have fucking perfect timing, that's when the door opens.

"The hell?" says Spencer in the exact same tone Brendon used twenty seconds ago.

Brendon manages to duck away from Ryan's lips. "I don't know!" he says. "He just came in here and jumped on me, it wasn't my fault!"

"Ryan, what's going on?" demands Spencer.

Ryan is looking back and forth between them. "Wait," he says. "I'm confused. If you guys weren't building up to a threesome, why was he jerking off in the bathroom the other night?"

Spencer's jaw drops. "Jerking-- _what?_ "

"Okay," says Ryan, jumping up and speedily backing out of the room. "I think you guys have some talking to do. Um. Bye." He disappears, leaving Brendon cringing at Spencer's bitchface.

"I wasn't jerking off," Brendon says. "I was naked because I'd just gotten out of the shower when I realized you guys were out there. What was I supposed to do, barge in on you?"

"Instead of _listening_ , yes." Spencer rubs his face with his palm. "Christ."

"Sorry," says Brendon quietly. He's glad Ryan found him rather than Spencer, because the erection would have made this a lot more difficult to explain away.

***

"I'm gonna need someone to give me a hand up here," says Brendon. "Don't worry, you won't have to put a cockring on me. I've got Spencer for that."

"Not that one, though," says Spencer. "Fortunately. If that one fit him, I wouldn't be able to move my legs right now."

The audience laughs. Brendon stares.

"C'mon, baby, pick a volunteer," says Spencer. "Nobody too cute, okay? I gotta look good by comparison."

Brendon stumbles through the rest of the routine. They haven't done this one in at least a year, and he doesn't remember the whole thing, but it still goes over okay. Drunk people are pretty easy to please once they're convinced they want to be enjoying themselves.

Offstage, Spencer says, "I think we should go with that one. I like it better."

"Yeah, okay," says Brendon. "Me too."

**Author's Note:**

> [](http://crazybutsound.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://crazybutsound.livejournal.com/) **crazybutsound** doodled these on some envelopes while I was chatficcing this to her, and I decided they needed to be shared (NWS):  
> [Brendon stealing the Jolly Green Giant's cockring](http://pics.livejournal.com/crazybutsound/pic/00093bff)  
> [Brendon in the bathroom](http://pics.livejournal.com/crazybutsound/pic/00094ce7/g97)  
> [How Jem decided the story should end, since the real ending wasn't conclusive enough for her](http://pics.livejournal.com/crazybutsound/pic/0009563r/g97)


End file.
